Certain drug infusion patients are considered flow restricted or volume restricted, meaning they can only receive a certain amount of medical fluid or drug over a given period of time. Neonatals or babies are one class of fluid restricted patients. Their bodies are too small to receive more than a certain amount of medical fluid or drug over a given infusion period.
There are circumstances in which a drug infusion patient, including fluid restricted patients, needs an infusion of a second drug or medical fluid in addition to the primary drug or medical fluid that the patient is currently receiving. In the situation in which the patient is fluid restricted, needing a second drug or medical fluid can present a problem if the primary drug or medical fluid that the patient is receiving is at or close to the maximum allowable flowrate for the patient.
In the above scenario, one solution is to inject the second drug or medical fluid into the primary fluid administration or intravenous (“IV”) bag. Here, the second fluid mixed with the first fluid in the bag upstream of the pump or the gravity-feed tube such that the flowrate through the pump or the gravity-feed tube does not vary despite the fact that a portion of the flowrate now includes the second medical fluid or drug. There are a number of problems with this approach however. First and foremost is that the patient may need the entire dose of the medical fluid or drug quickly and does not have the time to wait for the bag of primary fluid to be delivered to receive the full dose.
The second problem is effectiveness. That is, even if the patient has the time to allow the second drug to be delivered from the primary IV bag, the second drug may not be effective if diluted in the primary IV bag. In addition, the drug may have a lower specific gravity than the primary drug or solution and thus may tend to be delivered last to the patient.
A solution to the above-described scenario is needed accordingly.